MIRROR POEMS

-- The Paradox of Uncertainty –

John Herlihy

I once had a friend,

Who challenged my certainty.

To the very bitter end,

He insisted on uncertainty.

I choose to believe in God,

Accept this as a certainty.

The alternative, I am a clod,

Blinded by uncertainty.

I asked: What makes you disbelieve?

On this point are you so certain?

Why disclaim what I believe,

When nothing lies behind your curtain.

He replied: My senses tell me everything.

Proof definitive of what I need to know.

Seeing is indeed believing, the king,

The seed the source of all things that grow.

He never saw the paradox of uncertainty,

He saw nothing with his inner eye.

His claim found its life-support in certainty,

Belying the uncertainty on which he did rely.

-- The Paradox of Certainty –

John Herlihy

I hold to a spiritual belief,

That finds its roots in certainty.

Providing existential relief,

In the battle with life’s mystery.

My friend said: Impossible to be certain,

Of such things, no one knows for sure.

Our lives are full of the uncertain,

A supposition noted to be pure.

I replied: True, certainty suffers doubt,

Just as shadows cross the moon in stages.

Yet certainty born of an enduring sprout,

Will survive doubt’s onslaught thru the ages.

True, outer senses offer much to believe,

While inner senses even more will reveal.

The outer senses can sometimes deceive,

The inner senses never anything conceal.

In the end, we all live life “as if”,

A way of understanding, provisional.

Belief or disbelief, it’s all “as if”,

The path we all follow, conditional.

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Copyright © John Herlihy

Sunday 24 October 2021